


Parallels

by Le_mango



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23099992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_mango/pseuds/Le_mango
Summary: He who shall not be named keeps making cheeky comments about "ohh that's not the only parallel you'll see,,,, In a game that only I have. Neener neener." So that got me thinking about moments that would be cool to see again. One idea turned into twelve. I had to cut back to fifteen and those turned into a 'what it' Dina playable level?   Maybe this whole thing is just kinda weird since it's a different kinda writing then I'm comfortable with. I don't know. Imma just keep storying even though I'm really tired and it's past my bedtime.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	Parallels

**Author's Note:**

> He who shall not be named keeps making cheeky comments about "ohh that's not the only parallel you'll see,,,, In a game that only I have. Neener neener." So that got me thinking about moments that would be cool to see again. One idea turned into twelve. I had to cut back to fifteen and those turned into a 'what it' Dina playable level? Maybe this whole thing is just kinda weird since it's a different kinda writing then I'm comfortable with. I don't know. Imma just keep storying even though I'm really tired and it's past my bedtime.

Guttural clicks and a twitching head as the infected moved forward. The small rabbit struggled against the snare as the figure came closer. The sound seemed to echo through the overgrowth. Its head snapped to the side sensing the frantic movements. A screech. A lunge forward. A near-silent whine before an arrow pierced through its chest.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Dina spat quickly firing another arrow. She drew a third slowly walking backward. The clicker turned to the new target. She didn’t waiver firing the third and nocking another. Dina watched as it stumbled and fell to the ground unmoving. “God,” She huffed letting the tension go. Dina set the arrow back into her bag and grabbed one from the body. She knelt next to the small rabbit grabbing the squirming body. “Sorry,” she whispered, “But I promise you won’t go to waste.” A small pop as she broke the neck and the animal fell limp. The sound always made her a little queasy. A hypocritical thing considering what she had killed moments before.

“Won’t be needing you anymore,” Dina muttered untying the long wire from the bush. Talking to yourself was probably the first sign of crazy but she needed something to help fill the void. She could only imagine the monologues Ellie was running through at the moment. With luck they would be out of here before dusk. Granted she’d been saying that for a good three days now.

The small town was littered with sinkholes. She swore one had swallowed an entire block. Ellie said it looked similar to cities that had been bombed back east. At the rate things were going they just might end up back in Boston before finding anything. She followed a path up to a collapsed apartment building. A fire escape barely clung to the side and creaked eerily every time she moved. “Whatever you do don’t think about anything heavy.” Dina climbed up the last ladder, “Ellie’s entire fucking life, ah.” She dryly joked imagining the rest of the building collapsing. Seriously though, how did she manage to hide all that shit? Five years and she was still learning new and horrific details.

Dozens of broken solar panels covered the roof. Glass crunched under each step and a few birds flittered off as she got closer. She repeated a dozen prayers under her breath nearing the end of the row. The car battery stared back at her haphazardly connected to a panel. _“What do you want bitch?”_ It seemed to say.

She wasn’t sure when the battery had taken on the punk attitude, or sentience for that matter. Dina knelt down freeing two wires with a deep breath, “Please work,” she pushed them close and a bright spark jumped the small gap. “Motherjehfreh!” She jumped shaking her hand out. After the initial shock she let out a small laugh. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

Dina ran through the littered streets, boots occasionally slipping on a patch of moss or mud. She was nearing the final stretch. A telephone pole bridging over a particularly large sinkhole. Halfway across the pole shifted. “Shit,” she hissed speeding up. Dirt crumbled away in front of her, “shit shit shit shiiiiiit.” The beam fell and she left towards the edge scrabbling for any hold. The broken asphalt crumbled with her still hanging on to it. A sharp yelp is all that made it out before she slammed to the ground.

Footsteps. At least Dina was sure that’s what she heard. She wasn’t sure if she had blacked out or not. She crawled to the side of the pit tucking behind the rusted skeleton of a bus. There was no mistaking them now.

“I’m telling you I heard someone.”

“Sure you can hear someone four blocks away but you can’t hear Kelton getting stabbed,” The second scoffed.

 _“These fuckers are still here!?”_ She mentally panicked. If they were searching through the town they were bound to find their temporary base.

Long shadows were cast along the ground as they stood on the edge. “Shit just keeps falling apart.” He kicked a rock in and it bounced just a few feet from her hiding spot. Dina curled into a tighter ball not daring to breathe until they were gone. “Okay,” she sighed crawling back out, “this is fine. Everything’s great.” She stood with an immediate groan, “holymother-fuckingshit.” She was sure her entire body would be a bruise within the hour. “Battery.” She threw down her bag to check if it had been damaged in the fall. Luckily enough it looked like her ass managed to take all the damage.

“I’m coming Lee. We’ve got to get out of here.” Dina tracked back and forth hoping to find a climbable edge and found nothing but crumbly dirt and gravel. There was a nice bottle of booze in one of the cars though. Maybe she could drink it and use the drunken numbness to tunnel a way out only using her hands and half a pair of scissors. There was water trickling in from somewhere. The source was behind a suspiciously placed pallet. She pushed it aside to reveal a locked grate. “Well, now we’ve got something.” A few tries with the crowbar and the lock popped off. Ellie’s dumbass probably would have pulled out a shotgun, and missed. God she loved her.

“Okay okay okay.” Dina braced herself for whatever dead animals and slime that could be ahead. It took about three seconds for the dark tunnel to turn eerie. The first exit was a small room with a handful of beds. Hard to imagine wanting to sleep in the coffin-like room but it had easily been years since someone had touched it. Two more similar bunks carved into the tunnel, pictures and scraps of former lives tacked to the dirt walls. A few more yards before she found a ladder leading to a trap door. She jammed her shoulder against the door to force the stiff hinges open. A withered body rolled off disintegrating into fine pieces. “Oh gross.” She coughed knowing she just inhaled a pure shot of person dust.

The small office had nothing of value and she could already hear infected. “This just keeps getting better and fucking better.” Dina pulled on her mask not wanting to be surprised by anything beyond the door. Knife at the ready she inched it open and, nothing. Rows of shelves lined a narrow hall. Each one loaded with different parts. Pistons crammed into crates, overflowing boxes of screws and springs, explosives, and a hundred more things she couldn’t even begin to identify. She couldn’t make a dent in the stash with a team of horses.

She pulled down a small box and her mouth dropped, “Holy shit.” Dozens of medallions slid off her palm, one side blank, the other an engraved firefly symbol. The logo was slightly different than the ones she’d seen before. Dina’s attention snapped to a form moving at the end of the hall. The flashlight's beam barely reached the clicker as it teetered out of sight. It was old, borderline bloater old. While there was no way of telling which way led out she chose to go the opposite direction of a fight.

Rushed plywood walls filled the warehouse. Small rooms carving personal corners in the massive and paradoxically cramped space. The further she went the more clinical, and durable, rooms became. Dusty microscopes lined against a wall. Tall lights circling beds and tables. One bed had the remains of an infected. Most of the body blooming down the supports and onto the walls in thick plates. What remains of its arms were still strapped to the bed. “Oh, this is goddamn creepy.”

She was tempted to start carving arrows in the walls before she got lost in the maze of narrow halls. Some doors were blocked by fallen debris, most were chained shut. She absolutely did not want to find out why. Dina inched an office door open humming a little song to keep her mind focused on something other than the overwhelming smell of death. A withered body was slumped over a wide desk. A broken syringe on the floor. “Jesus.” She was about to move on before noticing a notebook under a papery arm. She slid it free and the body shifted with an unsettling click.

Dina quickly flipped through a few pages picking up random phrases. _”Unsuccessful....use of a passive treatment... a third doctor lost from... unwilling test subjects... decelerated growth but poor outcome..... while brilliant, the stubborn refusals from Anna... running low on surgical masks,”_

“Wait, no no no no. Fuck, did I read that right?” She franticly tried to find the page again, “Why do doctors have such shit handwriting?” She complained becoming so engrossed in her search she didn’t notice the figure until it was at the door.

The clicker screeched arms flailing out. Her heart rate spiked through the roof beating the damn thing with a bat. Even after it fell the pulsing was overpowering her hearing. Dina swore stuffing the notebook and any other documents she could into her bag. They didn’t mean shit if she couldn’t get out of this hell-hole. She took off towards a promising double door. More hallways, empty rooms, and wandering clickers. A green exit sign clung to the roof pointing to a collapsed wall. She pushed through a narrow tunnel, “God,” She hissed as it collapsed behind her. Light filtered through a high window. The only problem was the dozen or so infected in the way. Dina let out a low breath, “Fuck me.”

-X-

Ellie’s nervously tapped on the stock of her rifle as she checked the window again. The explosion had gone off an hour or so ago and the thick black smoke still marked the sky. It was hard to tell how far away it was, or who had set it off. “Come on Dee.” Ellie frowned backing away. She leaned heavily on the furniture in order to move around the small room. Each step was agonizing but she would crawl if she had to search the city. “Where the hell are you?” She finished packing the last of their small camp up. She checked her watch what seemed like every hour but sometimes only seconds had passed.

Ellie was thrown out of her thoughts hearing steps rushing into the house. She jumped up aiming at the door just as it was thrown open. “We have to fucking go.” Dina panted.

She was covered head to toe with a mix of grime and blood. Ellie’s eyes widened as she dropped the rife, “Where the hell have you,”

“Hey. No no, off the leg.” Dina rushed forward supporting Ellie at the waist.

“Dina what,”

“No seriously. We’ve got to leave.” She brought a hand up to Ellie’s cheek pulling her into a brief kiss. “I promise I’m fine but I made a lot of noise and pissed a lot of things off.” She scanned the room sliding under Ellie’s arm, “you already packed?”

“Yeah. Whatever you blew up managed to shake the whole block.” Ellie leaned heavily into Dina’s shoulder. Even with the support each step was an awkward hop. “Is there a plan?”

“That got fucked a week ago.” Ellie’s snort was immediately turned to a pained gasp trying to keep up with her. “Sorry. There’s still a couple of roads intact but you better pick a god and start praying.” Dina pushed into the garage and led Ellie to the hood of the car. She handed off the battery before running back to gather the rest of their things.

“Ookay,” Ellie managed to keep her balance while working the battery back into its place, “You better fucking work before I get both of us killed.” She attached the wires and pushed herself around to the passenger side. Dina came back tossing her bag on top of the supplies they’d already stashed in the back seat. The faint echo of gunshots could be heard. “Jesus. How did you manage to piss off an entire city?”

“Later,” Dina jumped into the driver seat and set the keys into place. She turned them and the car sputtered. “Come on.” She hissed trying again. “I fuckinswear to-” The rest was an unintelligible mumble. The third time the ignition took and the engine flared up to a steady growl. “Thank god.” She cheered for a second before running to push the garage door open.

“On your back,” Ellie called out keeping a pistol aimed out the window. The door let out a horrific squeal as Dina forced it open. She could already see infected forms moving beyond the door. “That’s good. That’s good!”

“This is fucking stupid,” Dina noted jumping back into the seat. She threw the gear down and the car rocketed out of the garage. The uneven curb threw the car into the air and it landed hard, stalling. “Fuck. Fuck FUCK!” Dina punched the wheel desperately trying to get it to restart.

“Watch the clutch!” Ellie unhelpfully shouted. Infected were pouring from every window and alleyway.

“I know,” Dina gritted.

“Jesus fucki-“

“Ell!” The runner was already at the window screaming into her face. She shoved her forearm under its chin struggling to hold it back.

“Fu.King. Move!” She shoved the runner back enough to get a shot off into its head. The engine finally came back to life and Dina threw the car into reverse. “What are you-“ Dina pushed Ellie against the seat as she gunned it.

The car jerked rolling over a body. A few more bounced off the sides. The car rocked violently over the damaged road and Dina finally spotted a space large enough to turn. “Hang on.” She warned focusing on the timing of the maneuver. The car slid into a muddy patch whipping them around. She switched gears driving straight into a clicker that rolled over the hood before getting thrown to the side. They slowly distanced themselves from the infected. Then the town. It wasn’t until the open remains of the highway that it felt like they could breathe again.

“Where the hell did you learn to drive?” Ellie panted letting her head fall against the rest.

“Leaving your mom's house.” Dina weakly teased earning a snort. Oh shit, her mom. “I uh, found some things while I was out.”

“You found the base?”

“Well, that implies I was looking for it, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.”

Ellie stared at her for a moment before brushing her dark hair back. She picked out a chunk of unidentifiable gore and tossed it out the window. “I’m assuming there wasn’t a welcome committee.”

“Not one single balloon.” Dina sighed, “There’s a bunch of shit in my bag you can start going through.”

Ellie automatically replied reaching for the backpack. “You did what in your bag?”

“I will leave you on the side of the road.”

Ellie worked through a handful of notebooks and loose papers. Most were so technical she could feel the words bounce off her eyeballs. Hundreds of people dead or killed. It also seemed like the “volunteers” were beaten to a pulp first or held at gunpoint. “Jesus,” Ellie sighed chewing on her thumbnail. “This just keeps getting worse.”

“What?”

She took a deep breath before reading the passage. “Eight volunteers were exposed to the infection through a standard injection in the left hand. Amputations varied by two hours. Those who were amputated at the elbow within six hours of exposure did not seem to be affected by the CBI. The time may be a factor to be tested with amputations at the shoulder. Two subjects passed from complications with the recovery. The other two will be held for further monitoring.”

“What the actual hell?”

“Yeah, fucked up. But this is the second time I’ve seen amputation work, -ish.” Dina raised a brow, “I found some dude in a mall a few years back.”

“I’m assuming dead.” Ellie nodded not bothering to elaborate. There was the occasional section or note she would point out but she mostly stayed silent. Her face would constantly shift between interest, disgust and outright horror at times.

They pulled over to siphon more gas. Ellie kept watch as Dina checked the handful of cars at the isolated rest-stop. She found a sleeve full of CD’s each titled something stupid like ‘Beep-beep’ and ‘Dank’. A majority of the disks were damaged and would skip randomly. There was a slight chance they could be tracked by the trail left behind as they chucked the bad CDs out the window.

Ellie eventually started on the second notebook. She had gone so quite Dina had to check she hadn’t fallen asleep. “That’s the one that,”

“It keeps referring to my mom. And Marlene.” Ellie’s frown only deepened with each turn of the page. The sun sank lower and lower and Dina started watching for somewhere to set up for the night.

Without warning, Ellie screamed punching the dashboard. “FUCK. Fucking bullshit!” Her fist slammed against the door over and over again.

“Hey. Ellie stop!” Dina reached out grabbing an arm. Ellie broke free hitting the dash again. “No. No, knock it off.” Dina scolded grabbing her again.

She continued beating the door with her free hand, “What the hell am I?” Her voice wavered and the following punch was much weaker. “Ahhh,” a low wine as she moved to brace her injured leg.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“No.” Ellie inadequately lied her eyes starting to water. She threw the notebook into the back before slouching forward.

“Ell you need to fucking breathe.” Dina ran her hand up and down the arm she’d grabbed. “I can pull over.”

“No. It’s too open here.” Ellie’s head rocked back and forth. “I don’t fucking know what to do.”

“You don’t have to. We sure as hell aren’t doing anything until you can walk.”

“I’m sorry,” Ellie slowly grabbed Dina’s hand bringing it to her chest. “I shouldn’t have brought you into this.”

“You didn’t make me do anything.” Dina ran her thumb across the hand she couldn’t see. Ellie took another shaking breath. “We’ll figure this out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever wonder whats eating Ellie Williams? (CoughitsDinacoughcough) Why she so angry? What's with all the moral ambiguity and dilemmas? When will N*il stop leaving troll tweets everywhere? 
> 
> I always get really weird ideas for like fighting. Like could you use monkey golf balls to trip an enemy? what about setting a bag of popcorn on fire for a delayed diversion? Dina was two seconds away from being post-apoco Mycguiver out here. but yee. Your comments, thoughts and ajhalskdj's are super helpful. I want to start another multi-chap fic before the game is released but who knows where my brainpower will be. If you find Mangos brain please return it to lost and found


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